


Covered in Skin

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: TFLN prompt,(310): I’m partying with my neighbours right now. And by “with my neighbours” I mean they are partying in their backyard and I’m partying in mine. And by “partying” I mean I’m sitting here alone drinking tequila.Set almost immediately post the season 6 finale.





	Covered in Skin

There are cars flanking both sides of the suburban street as she eases her own up between them noiselessly. A bunch of balloons tied to her neighbour’s letter-box sway and bob in the evening breeze, fight to free themselves, a cacophony of colour and implied celebration that shoves her equilibrium forcefully to the left.

Hard against ribs, against chest muscles and abs that are sick and sore from worry.

She climbs the stairs to the front door. Marches to the beat of monitors that have become her sole background noise. _One, two, one, two, one…_ Derek. A slightly off-tempo _one… two, three, one…_ for Alex. Her own heart-beat swings wildly between the two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside, the house is empty. Wind catches the door and slams it into the frame behind her back as she steps through. She flinches violently. Barely manages to swallow down a hollowed out shriek. Traps it between her teeth, but only just.

She hasn’t been home for three days. Has spent the previous two sitting a rotating vigil at Seattle Pres. She barely recognises the corners. The shadows that fall haphazardly through curtains that remain perpetually pulled to half-way.

The tequila bottle is on the kitchen table. Hasn’t quite made it back to the liquor cabinet from last weekend. Or maybe the weekend before that. The first mouthful burns. But not nearly enough. She thinks, fleetingly, of the foetus that was but isn’t anymore and swallows around another pull just because she can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s out the back door before she even registers that her feet are moving. Wading through ankle deep grass, dewy and slick, that Alex had promised to mow come his next day off. She sinks into it now, face first as her tears turn the ground beneath her salt-water muddy.

Music, party music, seeps through the warped fence palings. Minute gaps that fill with laughter and life and a thousand other things she can barely bring herself to recognise. She wants them out of her yard. The noises. The cheer.

Disappeared and gone.

She screams into the black. A breathy silence that is all suffocating air and not much more.

Rolling onto her back, she lets the soft rain that has started to fall fill the contours of her face. She has drowned before. Almost. Not quite. She is no longer scared of the sensation. She thinks she might be drowning now…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone, a face she can’t see, cranks the music up an inch or several. She pretends she can feel the bass leeching through the earth. Under the fence and into her bones. A counter-rhythm of sorts to the staccato tap-tap of her own blood.

She counts. Loses count. Starts again.

Twists her fingers into the grass and holds on. Tight. Soil under her nails and rain-drenched.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She falls asleep under the clouds. And to the soundtrack of a life she can’t ever imagine living. Wakes while it’s still dark; dark but silent. Shivering against a cold that feels marrow-deep.

Lets the last one fifth of tequila warm her slowly. Inside to out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her cell-phones bursts to life in the pocket of her jacket. A shrill bleat that pierces the stillness, staggers through her bones. Her fingers fumble against the keys. Too thick as she stabs at the buttons blindly.

Desperate all of a sudden for a familiar voice.

The one she gets is not the one she is expecting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_“Iz…”_

There are a thousand things she wants to say. Words jammed between her teeth and filling her hollowed out insides with a buzzing white noise. Whole sentences; barely formed.

She gets stuck on the first syllable and can’t quite make it any further than there.

Knows it is more than enough nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A shadow looms, inky against the gradual sunrise. She won’t open her eyes.

_Can’t._

Because if it’s nothing more than the shifting of a tree branch or a bird skittering overhead, she thinks she’ll lose the last vestiges of sanity she’s managed to scrape together. Fraying seams and loose cotton threads. Desperately tied.

“Mer?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They carry each other back inside. Arms around shoulders and fingers fisted tightly into tangled knots of hair.


End file.
